Seth Kast opened his eyes to a rusted, corrugated ceiling, and was surprised to be opening his eyes at all.

For several moments, he remained still, waiting for a cascade of pain to hit him like a tidal wave, but he felt nothing save for a general yet vaguely distant ache across most of his body. As he allowed himself a small ration of hope and belief in the fact that the pain was not going to strengthen into saw-edged agony, thoughts began to drift across the vast, almost wholly blank expanse that was his mind, like ships sailing in perfect quietude across the infinite starscape he sometimes saw when he looked out the windows on whatever starship he was serving on.

He was supposed to be dead.

The battle aboard the Endar Spire had been going horribly. He had a flash of fighting through the steel corridors that snaked through the large Republic vessel, surrounded by the dead and the dying, exchanging volleys of blaster fire with men and women in shining silver suits, their faces hidden entirely behind mirrored visors. The effect made them eerily insectile, almost closer to droids than beings of flesh and blood. Or, when the fighting got too close for comfort, sparks would fly as metal met metal in vicious sword fights.

A voice came to him from somewhere nearby, a strange voice that spoke with a curious cadence and an oddly wet, guttural quality. Although he could tell they were speaking Galactic Basic, he could not make out the words, nor place the species.

Where was he?

His train of thought momentarily derailed, Seth instead focused on gathering clues from his surroundings. He heard that same voice, and, as he focused, others, somewhere nearby. No one was shouting, no orders were being given. Just quiet talk. He could smell something now, as well, a bad smell. Garbage, old meat, overcooked food, a faint whiff of kolto, and something else. Something he couldn't quite identify, but definitely something bad, whatever it was. Slowly, Seth propped himself up on one elbow, waiting for the pain to flare up.

It did, a bit, but not as much as he was afraid it might.

He was avoiding looking at his body, which was almost entirely covered in a tattered old threadbare blanket. He was in a simple shack with a doorway and small window cut out of the basic corrugated metal plates, neither of them able to be closed, given there was no glass, nor no actual door. And wherever he was, it must be night. He saw no sunlight, just an ugly white artificial light. Thoughts began to crowd in again, but once more they were batted away by the situation at hand: the voices had fallen silent...

Footsteps were drawing closer to him now.

A shadow fell across the doorway. Seth clenched his fingers, feeling his body tense up beneath the old blanket.

Who was coming to see him? Friend or foe?

A selkath stepped into the shack. "Oh, you're awake." A female, he assumed at least. This was the voice he had heard speaking earlier. She shifted closer to him and he saw that yes, she was a female. She had tendrils hanging from the back of her head and he remembered that this is what differentiated the two genders of the aquatic race, some factoid he'd picked up out there in the galaxy, serving the Republic.

"Who are you?" he asked.

She came to stand beside the bed he was laying in, studying him. "My name is Serilda. I saved your life. Well, I helped. You can call me Seri," she replied, reaching out and pulling the blanket back with that same kind of detached manner that most doctors seemed to have. He sighed, realizing that he was almost naked beneath the blanket, but made himself relax.

He didn't think she was hostile.

"Thank you," he replied, then coughed. His throat was dry.

"You are welcome. And thirsty." She turned and crossed the room, then crouched by a battered gray footlocker. Unlatching it, she propped it open and began rooting around in it. Seth looked around the room. There wasn't much in it, although he could see a table scattered with medical supplies. Some of it looked pretty old and dirty.

She stood suddenly and returned to his side with a battered canteen. "Drink," she said, passing it to him. He accepted it, unscrewed the cap and did so. The liquid inside was water. It was warm and left a bad aftertaste, but he drank half of it anyway, then re-screwed the cap and passed it back to her. She set it on a small table, like a nightstand, beside him.

"Where am I?" he asked, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand and sitting up fully. He half expected her to try and restrain him, as most medics seemed wont to do when patients tried to get up before they had been told to do so, but she simply took a step back, studying him.

"Taris," she replied.

He didn't recognize the name. But, then again, there were thousands upon thousands of worlds in the galaxy. He recalled seeing it from orbit, when the vessel he was aboard was being slaughtered by the Sith, brought down like some great sea beast. The planet looked like it was covered in a cityscape, like Coruscant.

"What happened to you?" Seri asked.

Seth groaned as he got to his feet. Definitely pain there, and looking down at his body now, nude save for a pair of boxers, he saw ugly red regions across his scarred skin. Burns, healed by kolto. It was miracle-working stuff, but he'd be raw and a bit sore for a few days yet. Well, Seth had a lot of experience with ignoring pain.

"I'm a soldier with the Republic," he murmured, slowly raising his arms, flexing them, testing them, seeing what kind of range of motion he had and popping his stiff joints as well. It felt like he'd been out for way too long. "The ship I was serving on, the Endar Spire, got into a battle with the Sith overhead. They won and I..." he hesitated. He remembered fleeing the ship, heading for the pod bay. He'd gotten there, seen a few others getting into the last pod, and then something behind him had exploded...

"I escaped. Were there any other survivors in the pod you found me in?" he asked.

"I didn't find you, Nova did. But no, she said you were the only survivor," Seri replied, shaking her head regretfully.

"Have there been any other pods?" he asked, twisting his back and listening to it pop, relieving the tension that had built up there.

"I'm afraid not, not as far as I know. Though I imagine most of them would have landed in the Upper City. It's amazing your pod got down as far as it did," she replied.

"The Upper City..." he murmured, then walked to the window and looked out it. He saw more ramshackle structures, and the spaces in between them were all dirt with what looked like sickly weeds growing up out of it. Glancing up, he did not see sky, as he expected, but instead of huge expanse of old gray metal, illuminated only by rows of distant lights. "Where are we?"

"The Undercity, I'm afraid," Seri replied.

He didn't like the sound of that. But he had more important things to consider. As he stood there, his mind finally coming back online, priorities began to manifest inside his skull, and he felt the press of time and responsibility.

"How long was I out?" he asked.

"About a day and a half," Seri replied.

He sighed, shaking his head, frustrated. Too long. "Do you know where the nearest Republic outpost is? Or communications center? I really need to get in touch with my superiors, let them know what's happened."

"I'm afraid there are no Republic outposts on this planet," Seri said.

Again, that regretful tone. He turned to face her. "What do you mean?"

"This planet is completely under Sith control."

Seth felt his insides twitch, felt a small depth charge of anxiety drop deep into his guts and detonate soundlessly.

Threatening more than just anxiety to rear its ugly head.

No.

He twisted on his self control, settling it rigidly back into place. Over a decade as a soldier, he wasn't going to freak out now. Although...damn, trapped behind enemy lines, injured and without any kind of weapons or backup, all alone...

It was a bit of a nightmare scenario.

"I have to get off this planet," he said finally.

"We'd all like that, I think," she murmured.

"What do you mean?"

She sighed. "It's complicated. Right now, you need clothes. And I imagine you'll want to talk to Nova," she replied, moving over to the table that sported all the medical supplies. He realized that he'd missed something in his initial sweep of it: a stack of clothes and a pair of boots. They had burn marks on them. His boots. Well, at least they managed to salvage those.

"My uniform?" he asked, although he imagine he knew the answer.

"We had to cut it off of you. Lots of blood, burns where the armor failed," Seri replied, grabbing the clothes and bringing them to him.

"Thank you. My armor?" he asked, beginning the painful process of getting dressed again. All he had for clothes now was a gray, sleeveless shirt and old, faded beige cargo pants.

"Nova has it. She made repairs to it and she's been using it for her runs."

"Runs where?"

"Out into the Undercity. It's dangerous out there, and she figured that you weren't going to be using it for the moment."

Seth finished tightly lacing up hits boots, then stood. "Fair enough," he replied. "Take me to Nova."

"This way."

Seri led him outside.

* * *

Outside was a relative term.

Stepping out of the door behind Seri, Seth found himself in an open courtyard, fringed by more ramshackle structures that looked like they'd been cobbled together, and not by particularly skilled individuals.

He looked up again and saw that yes, that really was an artificial ceiling up there in the sky, maybe a hundred, perhaps a hundred and fifty feet up. So, if the planet was indeed covered pole-to-pole in a cityscape, then he must be under it.

The Undercity indeed.

Seri led him out of the small cul-de-sac and into a broader area littered with more structures. None of them were above one story. Off to the left and behind him, where he'd come from, he could see huge walls of dark metal rising up, forming a corner.

"What is this place?" he asked as he followed Seri.

He saw people now, moving among the shacks. They were all filthy, wearing torn, dirty clothes. They all looked malnourished or ill, and hopeless. They moved slowly, a kind of mournful despair etched onto their pale faces. Most of them were human, but he saw a few twi'leks and an ithorian mixed in with the lot.

He'd seen slums and ghettos before, but this looked more like a refugee camp made in the midst of a brutal conflict that had been going on for years.

"Taris is divided up into three sections," Seri replied as she led him on. "The Upper City is where the rich and privileged live. The humans."

"There's no privileged non-humans?" he asked.

"Not on Taris. Some twi'leks and maybe the odd ithorian, but otherwise no. Racism is alive and thriving on Taris. The Lower City is ruled by gangs. Not awful, a bit dangerous, but generally livable. Generally. This, however, is the Undercity. This is where convicts and exiles live. Where the unwanted are cast. A lot of them are the children of a whole generation that was exiled down here after an attempted rebellion decades ago when the poor rose up to tear down the rich. It didn't work and the survivors were tossed down here."

"What a nightmare," Seth muttered. "And no one...stopped it? No one lets them up? You're born down here and you stay down here?"

"Yes," Seri replied.

That didn't sound right, but...certainly worse atrocities had been committed in the Republic's long and patchwork history. And they were pretty far out there, not exactly on the Outer Rim, but definitely nowhere near the Core worlds, so he supposed he could imagine that the Republic authorities would overlook or perhaps not even be made aware of something like this. Especially lately, with the conflict with the Sith that had come hot off the heels of the war with the damned Mandalorians. It seemed like they couldn't catch a break.

"So Nova can help me?" he asked.

"Well, if anyone down here can, she can," Seri replied. "She and Yex are the ones that have kept us all alive and in as much comfort as we're currently in. I suppose I've helped a fair amount too, when I can."

"Yex?"

She pointed out the ithorian he had spied. He was seated at a table scattered with old tools and oily spare parts, pondering over them. "He fixes things. I fix people," Seri explained.

"What does Nova do?"

"She heads out into the Undercity to find us much needed supplies, and she hurts those that would try to hurt us."

"She sounds tough, and dangerous," Seth murmured.

"She is," Seri confirmed. "Here. In there."

They came to stand before another of the shacks that looked a bit more well put together than the rest. It even had a piece of metal covering up the window hole that looked like it could be raised or lowered. And a door.

Not many of these places seemed to have a door.

Well, time to meet this Nova.

Seth walked up to the door and knocked.